hard life - ‘tears’ Review: Back in business, and already soaring
tears finds Murray comprehending the last nine months, and diving into several life-changing realisations that came with these changes.
★★★★★★★★☆☆
Credit: hard life 📸
The band formerly known as easy life have re-emerged with a brand new single tears, after being sued by Easy Group in the latter part of last year.
Now known as hard life, the Leicester indie hip-hop outfit announced their return exclusively through BBC Radio 1 on 11th June, following a prolonged period of silence.
tears finds lead vocalist Murray comprehending the last nine months, and diving into several life-changing realisations that came with these changes. It seems the lawsuit gave the band time to reflect on more than music, but their lives as a whole.
Murray unravels the near-constant graft the group have been on since 2017 and reconciles with how their lives have changed for better and worse.
‘To my absent friends that never stay in touch and when we send DM’s they only gather dust, say my accents changed from my native tongue’ he shoots, wrestling with finding himself on the brink of his band falling apart.
There’s even a moment of gratitude for still being able to continue, ‘Seen artists come and go, I’ve got survivor guilt’, which sounds playful at first but is a stark reality for many musicians being on the scene for almost a decade.
Bubbly, self-assured and poignant, this is the strongest way they could’ve returned, taking one of the biggest challenges a band could face and turning it into a success. Social media has been flooded with rallying support, already digging their comeback.
Musically, it’s a step forward from what came before but retains the colourful groove that keeps tracks like this on repeat in your playlists.
On the brand new name, Murray explained to Jack Saunders (Radio 1):
“We all thought it had to be hard life, but we cycled through thousands of names. One of which was Jet Lagged, which I’d still like to use for an album or EP, but we didn’t want to just be known for the lawsuit. It always came back to hard life.”
If you’re unfamiliar with the situation, easy life (now hard life) rose to notoriety with their debut album life’s a beach in 2021, and equally successful sophomore MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE the following year.
After playing sold-out arenas and a packed festival season, the band announced they were being sued by Easy Group in late 2023 over their name.
Unable to fight the corporation in court, due to financial limitations, they played two final performances in Leicester and London to say goodbye. Both were bursting with positivity and togetherness and saw no hard feelings, only smiles. These shows simply closed one chapter and opened another.
:: Round-Up ::
tears kicks off the next chapter for one of the UK’s most promising indie bands. If you need proof that music always prevails, this is one for the history books. The boys are back in business, and they’re already soaring.
